Narratives

Site Information

With Germany defeated in
November 1918 the path was cleared for a newly constructed Polish republic
to be established with Allied backing; this was duly declared on 10 February
1919. This was however by no means the end of uncertainty for Poland,
with the ultimate makeup of Europe yet to be agreed at the Paris Peace
Conference, and with military disagreements with Russia, the Ukraine and
Czechoslovakia rumbling on.

Sponsored Links

Click here to read the statement issued by the Polish Regency
Council - established by the country's wartime German occupiers - on 11
November 1918 (the date of the
armistice) which announced
that General
Josef Pilsudski, newly freed
from German incarceration, was to be appointed to military command of
Poland's Army.
Click here to read a
subsequent decree, issued three days later, in which the Regency Council
formally announced its own dissolution in favour of Pilsudski pending
assembly elections.
Click here to read a
statement issued by Pilsudski on the same day in which he outlined his
immediate plans.

Click
here to read an interview conducted with Pilsudski by a French
newspaper in February 1919.
Click here to read the text
of the U.S. government's formal recognition of the Polish government, by now
politically led by
Ignace Paderewski (with Pilsudski's blessing while the
latter oversaw military matters).
Click here to read an address
issued by Paderewski in May 1919 in which he summarised events to date at
the Paris Peace Conference.
Click here to read a
statement issued by Paderewski in September 1919 in which he expressed his
support for Polish entry into the
League of Nations.

Click here
to read a statement issued by Herbert Hoover - head of the U.S.
reconstruction organisation in Europe - dated August 1919 in which he
documented his reservations with regard to the speed with which Poland's
economic infrastructure could be rebuilt.

U.S. Secretary of State
Robert Lansing's Recognition of the Paderewski Government, 29 January 1919

The President of the United
States directs me to extend to you, as Foreign Minister and Secretary of Foreign
Affairs of the Provisional Polish Government, its sincere wishes for your
success in the high office which you have assumed and his earnest hope that the
Government of which you are a part will bring prosperity to the Republic of
Poland.

It is my privilege to extend to
you at this time my personal greetings and officially to assure you that it will
be a source of gratification to enter into official relations with you at the
earliest opportunity.

To render to your country such
aid as is possible at this time, as it enters upon a new cycle of independent
life, will be in due accord with that spirit of friendliness which has in the
past animated the American people in their relations with your countrymen.